DiLorenzo's scathing reappraisal of both the Civil War and Lincoln - a
president deified across the political spectrum and placed by the
American psyche in the same pantheon as the Founding Fathers - does
not make for politically correct reading. But it does make some valid
points. Lincoln's reputation as a great racial egalitarian is largely
a myth and, while some may justify this on the grounds that it was a
time of war, his administration did not represent a particularly
bright period for civil liberties in the United States. Wars are
rarely a simple morality tale, a battle in which one side is
completely good and the other completely evil. DiLorenzo's book is an
important contribution, as it forcefully demonstrates the flaws of the
Northern position and President Lincoln.

Nevertheless, too many libertarian and conservative Lincoln critics
have jumped to the conclusion that these flaws necessarily imply that
there were no corresponding flaws in the Southern position. Many even
go so far as to portray the South's struggle as an unambiguous battle
for limited government. If it is misguided to portray the Union side
as an impassioned crusade for racial equality, it is equally misguided
to portray the Confederacy as a bastion of libertarianism.

Southern leaders were espousing a political philosophy that was no
more libertarian than the mercantilism that was gaining traction in
the Republican Party in the North. The Southern political thought that
underlined the Confederacy was hostile to classical liberalism,
capitalism, industrialism and the notion of innate individual rights.
Southern leaders dating back to John Calhoun assailed the Declaration
of Independence and many adherents of the Confederacy saw themselves
fighting a counterrevolution opposed to the very ideals of the
American Revolution.

Thus, Confederate apologist (though reluctant secessionist) George
Fitzhugh fervently opposed capitalism and argued that the "Southern
Revolution of 1861" was a "solemn protest against the doctrines of
natural liberty, human equality and the social contracts as taught by
Locke and the American sages of 1776, and an equally solemn protest
against the doctrines of Adam Smith, Franklin, Say and Tom Paine and
the rest of the infidel, political economists, who maintain that the
world is too much governed." "Nothing can be more unfounded and
false," said Calhoun of natural rights. Thomas Cooper asserted, ""No
human being ever was, now is, or ever will be born free." Rights were
not inherent, but given by society and to be carefully restricted.

In attacking the Declaration ideal that "all men are created equal, "
Calhoun argued that only two people had ever been created, the second
(Eve) subordinate to the first (Adam). Blacks were not equal to whites
and whites unequal on the basis of class. Confederate Vice President
Alexander Stephens argued that while the United States had been
founded upon the Declaration's claims of human equality, the
Confederacy was "founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its
foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that
the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination
to the superior race, is his natural moral condition."

Libertarian essayist Tibor Machan has argued that a seceding group
does not have the right to take unwilling third parties along with it.
He was referring to slaves, but he could have made his case broader
than that. The Confederacy had among its unlibertarian goals the
preservation of the slave owning class' political power within highly
centralized state governments and a hierarchical class structure. In
her book The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in
Antebellum South Carolina, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
historian Manisha Sinha argued that some Southern nationalists even
wanted to create a hereditary aristocracy, dominated by the "slave
power." Plantation owners were not only depriving blacks of liberty,
but also the great majority of non-slave-holding whites with
considerably less economic and political power. And there were many
pockets of resistance to the Confederacy within the states that left
the Union: east Tennessee, western parts of Virginia and North
Carolina, sections of northern Georgia and elsewhere contained few
slaves but many Union sympathizers.

This slave-owning class wielded power in every state held by the
Confederacy and considerable power within the federal government prior
to the 1860 presidential election. This class also was perfectly
willing to use the power of the federal government when necessary to
suit its needs. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 used federal soldiers
and marshals to return slaves that had escaped to places where slavery
had been abolished in the North back to the Southern plantation
owners. The Dred Scott decision of 1857, denying all blacks
constitutional rights, was an amazing example of federal judicial
activism. If Lincoln at various points in his career accepted both, it
is nevertheless the case that it was Southern leaders who bore primary
responsibility for those federal policies. Southern leaders were
selectively willing to use unprecedented federal power as well as
states' rights and secession when necessary to accomplish their goals.

While it is true that Lincoln's method of creating the state of West
Virginia was constitutionally problematic, it is equally true that the
western counties of Virginia did not want to leave the Union. It is
true that the Union suspended habeas corpus, but so did the
Confederacy. It is true that there were crimes committed by Union
forces against Confederate civilians, most infamously Gen. William
Sherman. But there were equally immoral activities undertaken by
Confederate forces, including killing captured black soldiers from the
North and sending free blacks captured in Pennsylvania to the South to
be slaves.

This doesn't mean that Southerners should be ashamed of their heritage
or that the Confederate battle flag should be torn from public places,
as some suggest. Most Confederate soldiers - perhaps 90 percent -
never owned slaves and fought in the belief their homeland was in
danger. Both sides of the Civil War are a part of United States
history. DiLorenzo and others are correct to point out facts
unfavorable to the North and more favorable to the South that are
often ignored or even suppressed in discussions of the Civil War. But
we must also be careful to avoid replacing one overly simplified
morality tale of Southern villains being vanquished by the enlightened
North with an equally oversimplified morality tale of an unsuccessful
revolution for small government by Southern libertarians that was
mercilessly crushed by Northern despots.

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